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1:14 p.m. - 2013-10-15
Princess Takes A Trip

It's been a good weekend. Not wonderful or amazing, but good. And that's fine by me.

Took Princess to the dog park yesterday. Why we waited so long I do not know. It's just around the block from our house in the county park down past the arboretum. Princess doesn't go in the car very often and when I do take her somewhere she tends to cry. I'm not sure what she's worried about but she sure is vocal about it. Oddly enough she doesn't cry on the return trip. Shots, doggie beauty parlor, dog park, once back in the car it's as though she can't conceive of us going anywhere else. When Princess gets back in the car she's sure she's going home. She gets all comfy in the back seat and just wags and smiles. "YAY! We're going home! YAY!"

Boy howdy did she have a good time at the dog park! She's a little large to be a 'small dog' so when we were walking to the gate we hesitated a bit as to whether she should go into a 'small' or the 'big' section. Then just before we got to the entrance some woman passed us being hauled along by a Great Dane. Yeah, our sweet doggie was a little'un. So Princess went into the small dog section and had a grand time sniffing butts with all the pugs and Yorkies and dachshunds and various mop dogs. (It was a busy day for the local shih tzus and Lhasa apsos.) There were a couple of spastic poodles that made me think of my Pop. My step-father was a big fan of poodles. His poodles (Gigi, Gina, and Tina in succession) were his pals and went everywhere he did. Pop wasn't a tall man but he was big. Looked uncannily like a blonde Jackie Gleason. And for 20+ years there was a small grey poodle on his lap, trailing at his heels or sitting next to him in the car. Invite Pop to dinner and it was assumed his poodle was his + 1. Pop never bothered with the fancy poodle grooming, his girls were kept evenly trimmed without the poufs and topknots. Though occasionally some eager-to-please groomer would send his poodle home with pink toenails and a jeweled barrette on each ear and those decked out dogs always made us laugh. There was Pop sprawled out in his recliner with a poodle on his lap looking like she was about to leave for the Dog Prom.

My Pop was my favorite of all of my many parents. He was by far the kindest. He loved us girls as he did his poodles. A total smush. Ask for it and Pop would provide. The Christmas I was 14 he fought his way through a crowd at a Toys-R-Us in Edison, NJ to get me a Simon. We were supposed to spend our Christmas C-note on clothes (which we bought ourselves, God forbid my mother do actual gift buying for her daughters), but I always opted to shoot my yearly wad on treats. Books, perfume, a corduroy reading pillow with arms, and the year I was 14 it was a Simon. Sold out locally my Pop made a show of accepting three $10s from me in front of my mother and agreeing to find a Simon closer to the city. But you know what? I found those three $10s in my Christmas stocking and there was a Simon under the tree for me anyhow. He couldn't resist being Santa Pop, even if it had to be on the sly from my horrible mother.

It's coming up on Gram's yahrzeit and both MIL and Mick are getting freaky. I'm trying to be as patient as I can with Mick's douchey uptight behavior but it's wearying. Instead of acknowledging to himself (and us) that he's hurting and missing his grandmother terribly Mick is lashing out in the stupidest ways and making stinks about trifles and generally being impossible. Worse he tries to take it out on Wolf and I will not have it. No Mama Bear protecting her cub could be fiercer than I am and yesterday Mick got the full blast from me after he took after Wolf again over something so petty and stupid I can't even write it down, it's too absurd.

Part of my own impatience with Mick is my inability to empathize. I just never get all that whacked out about the dead. Maybe it's because I don't have anyone to mourn. Even my Pop. He's been dead for 10 years and when I think of him it's always with a smile. His memory doesn't hurt. I miss him sometimes but it doesn't flatten me with grief. Tommy and Dom and my other friends who died on 9-11, I get angry because their deaths were unfair and unnecessary. It's infuriating so many died for some shitty political end. But the howling pained anger Mick is feeling? I can't relate. It doesn't feel outrageous to me that Gram's dead. She was 94. She'd outlived two husbands. In the end Gram was nearly blind and almost stone deaf. She got confused and frightened a lot and she hated it. When she broke her leg Gram took it as a sign that it was time to go. She was tired and she was ready. Always phenomenally independent the broken leg meant the end of her living on her own. Gram had no intention of being a bedridden prisoner in MIL's back bedroom so she made her good-byes and she died. On her own terms because she bloody well wanted to. I loved her, liked her and I admired her, and I know she'd be as impatient with this yearly grief extravaganza as I am. Gram was all about living well according to no one's rules but her own.

Oy, if only Mick would just lie down and cry. I could deal with that. I'd be there with hugs and tissues and sit with him while he went through the photo albums. Believe me, I've tried. But he won't. Instead he's lashing out and making everyone around him miserable. Screaming at Joe Barky. Road rage. Throwing tantrums. Being a hyper-critical dick weasel. Today when he gets home I'm going to ask him if he thinks Gram would be pleased that he's 'honoring' her memory by acting like a jackass.

There now. I've gotten it out of my system. Thanks for listening. Mick is a good guy and a wonderful husband, but every once in a while we run into a patch like this that makes me want to bite his nose off.